


wide open spaces

by sadlikeknives



Category: Mercy Thompson Series - Patricia Briggs
Genre: Camping, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25489684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadlikeknives/pseuds/sadlikeknives
Summary: Kyle and Warren go camping.
Relationships: Kyle Brooks/Warren Smith
Comments: 9
Kudos: 58
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	wide open spaces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tentacledicks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentacledicks/gifts).



Things came to a head late in the summer, after Mercy had been kidnapped by Italian vampires, after it turned out they were at war with some witches now, after Warren had met the president, after the whole thing with, apparently, Rumpel-fucking-stiltskin, after Kyle had shot a werewolf on their front lawn and they had become even more 'those neighbors' than they had been before, after one of his cases had spiraled to the point that Warren had stepped in and _done something_ off the books and under the radar, and Kyle knew it had been the only option left on the table for an acceptable resolution but he still struggled with it. He felt like he was barely keeping his head above water, was the thing, and he didn't know what was going to happen next. Probably something even more insane, based on the available evidence.

Warren sat him down at the kitchen table one evening, took his hands in his, looked him very deliberately in the eye, and said, "You need a vacation."

" _I_ need a vacation?" Kyle asked, because he was not self-centered enough to not have realized that all of that shit had involved Warren more actively than it had him.

"Yes," Warren said firmly. "We have been together for five years--"

"More or less."

"We agreed not to talk about that," Warren said without missing a beat, because they had agreed not to talk about those eight months when they couldn't figure out what they were besides 'fighting, all of the time,' before Warren had almost died and Kyle had gotten slapped in the face by the reality that none of it, nothing at all mattered one tiny bit except that Warren stayed in his life and by his side. "We have been together for five years and you have not gone on vacation once in that time."

"Neither have you."

"That's different. I'm not a workaholic." That was fair.

"We went to Seattle that one time."

"Wow, yeah, our sex weekend in Seattle _four and a half years ago_."

"It was a really good sex weekend," Kyle argued, because it had been.

Warren agreed, "It was a really good sex weekend. It was also a weekend, and it was four and a half years ago."

Kyle sighed and admitted, "I need a vacation."

"Yes," Warren agreed.

"But you can't go anywhere. Not even to Seattle." Columbia Basin had had good relations with the Emerald City Pack previously, but everything was up in the air now, and even four and a half years ago when those good relations had been in full effect, there had been a minor incident with a couple of local jackasses harassing them while they were walking back to the hotel one night. Warren had backed them down with a look then. It might not be so simple now.

"Theoretically, I could go somewhere there aren't any packs around. Probably it would involve a passport. I don't know if my documents would hold up to that. Maybe. They held up to the PI background check."

"That was before you were out. Let's not test it unless we have to."

"That's pretty much what I was thinking," Warren agreed. "But even if I could go, I shouldn't. The pack needs me close right now." Warren took a deep breath, like he was bracing himself, and said, "But _you_ could still--"

"No," Kyle said before he could even finish that sentence. "Sitting on a beach sipping mai tais holds absolutely no appeal to me if you're not right there with me, not burning and not getting drunk like an asshole." 

The corners of Warren's eyes crinkled with amusement and affection, his shoulders easing with relief—he had clearly not liked the thought of Kyle going off somewhere without him, and hell, now that Kyle thought about it he didn't know if that would even be safe, either. He said, "But you do need a vacation."

"We could," Kyle said slowly, testing the words out in his mind and deciding that yes, he did want to say them out loud. "We could go camping."

Warren sat back in his chair, letting go of Kyle's hands, and said, "I have to admit, that was not where I was going with this."

"No, I know. You gave up on that years ago, and I have always felt a little bad about that."

"There's nothing wrong with knowing what you like and what you don't like."

"Yeah, but," Kyle shrugged. "I've never been camping. Who knows? I might turn out to like it after all. And...I need a vacation."

Warren looked at him for a long moment, then said, "Okay. But if you hate it we can always come home."

"Or go to a hotel."

"Or that," Warren agreed.

"The Columbia River Gorge, maybe?" Kyle suggested, trying to visualize his sketchy knowledge of the Pacific Northwest pack territories. There were only the two in Washington, and then nothing until you hit Montana and Aspen Creek. Before Adam's pack had moved here, the eastern half of the state had been empty, werewolf-wise, which now that Kyle thought about it probably had something to do with why Warren had moved here in the first place. He didn't know about Oregon, though. Maybe they should just stay out of Oregon to be on the safe side. "But not that campground Mercy and Adam went to and almost got eaten by evil fae otters."

"God, no," Warren agreed quickly. "I think it's for RVs anyway, but also: God, no. Let me talk to Adam."

"Probably a good idea, yeah."

Adam gave the okay, so camping in the Columbia River Gorge it was. "I have no idea what I'm doing so at this point I'm going to have to trust you to figure out how this works," Kyle told Warren.

"Wow," Zack said without looking up from his book. "Is that physically painful for you?"

Kyle threw a cushion off the sofa at him, and Zack ducked it neatly. Kyle looked mournfully at the cushion on the floor. Now it was all the way across the room and he wasn't going to stop being antsy until he got up and put it back in place. "See what you've done?" he asked Zack, who just smirked.

He turned back to Warren, who said, "You are a control freak."

"I know, and I accept this about myself. But if we rely on me we will either die or end up with way too much stuff. So just...let me know what's happening. We need to figure out when we're going so I can tell Angelina to clear my schedule."

Zack had had enough encounters with Angelina by that point to sound nervous as he asked, "Is she gonna be pissed?"

"She's gonna be thrilled to not see or hear from him for a few days," Warren said.

"Yes," Kyle agreed. "Very that."

"Okay," Warren said then. "Do this for me: define 'camping.'"

"You sleep in the woods in a tent. Everything else is optional, but I am going to have to insist upon access to indoor plumbing." There were _limits_.

"Technically, the tent is optional, too."

Kyle did not have to hesitate for a moment before saying, "No."

"We'll work up to that." Kyle narrowed his eyes at him, and Warren laughed.

"I'm not sleeping under the stars with the bugs, Warren." Warren kissed him once, quick, and then stood up from the couch. "I mean it."

"We'll see," he said, and scooped the pillow up off the floor and tossed it back to Kyle on his way out of the room.

***

They ended up going away for a weekend, because Warren didn't want to push his luck with regards to how long Kyle could stay in the woods without snapping, or with regards to how long he could stay away from the pack without some fresh hell breaking loose. It wasn't long enough. Kyle needed a lot more of a vacation than that. But it was what they could do, right then, a dipping of a toe into the water. It was a start.

The first night, after they had set up the tent (Kyle had been afraid he'd be no help, but it turned out that being able to read IKEA instructions translated as a skill), Kyle sat and watched Warren building a campfire with sure, steady hands. "Mercy thinks this is closer to how you'd prefer to live than how I live," he said, finally.

"I am going to have to ask you to pay no mind to what Mercy thinks about what I might want," Warren said. "Mercy has some weird complexes. Mostly I think from growing up among weird, old werewolves. One sure way to get twisted on anything is to use Bran Cornick as a benchmark."

"You did live like this," Kyle argued.

"I did live like this," Warren agreed. "It was not a bad life, or it wasn't when it was what I chose, what came with the territory of the job, rather than what I was doing because I didn't have any other options at the time. But I really like central air and our incredibly expensive mattress." And, Kyle suspected, their incredibly expensive security system, which Adam had turbocharged after the events surrounding last Thanksgiving. "And knowing where tomorrow's dinner is coming from."

"Where _is_ tomorrow's dinner coming from?" They had brought some food, in a cooler. Kyle was not convinced it was enough food, especially when he knew the way werewolves ate.

"That is something we will worry about later. We have a few options."

"Do we, now."

"I don't know how you feel about fishing--"

"I am willing to find out." He had concerns about cleaning any fish they managed to catch, but he was camping with a man who under certain circumstances would eat a bunny whole and raw, so he figured he could delegate.

Warren just looked at him and smiled. "Then we have options. Tonight, we're going to cook those steaks in the cooler, and then we'll have s'mores."

"I don't think I've ever had s'mores before."

"Really? Not even over a bougie fire pit in somebody's backyard or at some fancy summer camp for rich kids?" Kyle shrugged. "I have failed you. Those Girl Scouts know what they're about."

S'mores turned out to be fucking delicious, which Kyle felt like he should have been able to figure out sooner. They tasted even better in Warren's mouth. "We're getting a bougie fire pit," he declared.

"You won't hear any objections from me," Warren agreed, and kissed him again, but after a moment Kyle pulled back and looked at him. The light from the fire caught the side of his face oddly, the eye closer to the fire reflecting red in flickers. It should have been eerie, but it was just him. "What?" he asked. "Do I have chocolate on my face?"

If he did, Kyle could have licked it off. There was a thought. But what he said was, "We should move."

"Are you uncomfortable?"

"No, I mean. Our house. We should move. Shouldn't we?"

Warren looked away for a moment, then up at the stars. "I want to say it's not always going to be like it's been lately."

"But you can't promise that."

"No," he agreed. "I can't. I would understand," he continued, like the words were being cut out of him with a knife, "if it was too much for you--"

Kyle climbed into Warren's lap and shut him up with his mouth. "I don't give a fuck," he told him. "As long as there's you. But. Should we move?"

"I don't think we have to make that call just yet. But at the same time, the way things are going, there might come a time we regret not having made it sooner. I don't know. I know we don't have to worry about it this weekend."

Kyle shifted, getting more comfortable in his lap—Warren had some bony knees on him—and Warren easily manhandled him into a better position, letting just a hint of his real strength show. When he was settled, Kyle looked up at the stars. Even with the campfire burning low, there were...a lot more of them here than there were in their backyard. "Is this what it was like?" he asked softly. "Back before we lit everything up so the rest of us could see in the dark?"

"Well," Warren said, "there were fewer trees where I generally was. Also," he pointed. "That's a satellite." Kyle snickered. He wasn't sure what, exactly, Warren had pointed to. It was possible that with his human eyes, he couldn't even see it. But he took his point. "Out on the plains, where it's wide open, sometimes it would be...me and my horse and a million stars." Kyle had to kiss him again, because he understood what he was saying. It had been very beautiful. It had also been very lonely, and Warren, like most werewolves, like most people, was not built to be alone. Then he kept kissing him, because he could, and eventually they took matters into the tent.

***

When they pulled into the driveway on Sunday afternoon, Zack was waiting for them. He snapped a photo as Kyle got out of Warren's truck and explained, "Proof of life," as he shoved his phone back into his pocket and came to help them unload the truck. "Ben won a lot of money off Mary Jo because you lasted the whole time."

Technically, they had left a few hours before they had planned because Kyle had found a tick somewhere he didn't want to think about and had had a very small and, he thought, completely warranted breakdown over it. Warren had been very kind about it, even if Kyle had been able to tell he was laughing on the inside. He did not tell Zack that, and neither did Warren. If Ben was winning money off Mary Jo, they were happy for him. Instead, Kyle said, "I see that the house didn't burn down in our absence."

"Yeah, but I hope that giant raver I threw was okay." Kyle narrowed his eyes at him, and Zack asked, "Really? You have met me, right?"

"Point taken."

"So, what do you think?" Zack asked. "Going to give camping another try?"

Kyle thought about the tick, but he also thought about the stars, and about the way Warren had smiled back at him on their hike on Saturday morning, wide open and pleased, somehow younger looking. He still needed a real vacation. They had ended up going to a little restaurant Adam had recommended, where he and Mercy had eaten on their honeymoon, on Saturday night, so he still had to try out fishing, and coffee made over a campfire was surprisingly decent, but that was possibly just because Warren had a lot of experience with the art. "Maybe," he said. "I have to talk to Angelina about it." Warren looked like the proverbial cat with the canary. Kyle ignored him and asked Zack, "So did Mercy's house burn down again while we were gone?"


End file.
